Vlad the Impaler: Monster or Hero?

Heavily reworked version of my old drawing 'Dragonknight':

Below is a little essay I have written on the career of Vlad the Impaler, the historical 'Dracula'.

Dracula - Vlad III Ţepeş - was a real man, although it is not hard to see how circumstances and experiences turned him into a monster. Born in 1431, he was one of the sons of the prince of Wallachia  (part of present day Romania), Vlad II Dracul. The epithet 'Dracula' meant 'son of the dragon'. Vlad II gained the name 'Dracul' when he became a member of the Order of the Dragon, a chivalrous brotherhood. The Order had been founded in 1401 by Sigiusmund, King of Hungary and Holy Roman Emperor. It was pledged to the defence of Christendom against the encroaching Ottoman Turks - whose Islamic Empire threatened to subjugate Europe.

1354 had witnessed the first Turkish assault on Europe, across the Dardanelles. Ottoman colonisation ensued, at the expense of the Byzantine Greeks and the Serbs. The Sultan Murad I took Adrionople (Edirne) making it the Turkish capital. The Battle of Kosovo in 1389 was particularly bloody, claiming the lives both of Murad and the Serbian leader Lazar. The Turks were better placed to make up their heavy losses, however. Local forces and Western Crusader allies strived, with mixed fortunes, to prevent the Turks, under Beyezid I, and then Murad II, from extending their power over Eastern Europe. Inexorably the Turks gained territory while reducing several Christian realms to vassal status. Such vassals were required to hand over 'tribute' of treasure, and sometimes to surrender their daughters for Turkish harems, and their sons either as hostages - or worse - as part of the devşirme child tax. These boys were forced to convert to Islam, brainwashed, and trained as slave soldiers- Janissaries, spear-heading the ongoing aggressive war against their own former people.

The Eastern Roman or Byzantine Empire had been whittled away over the centuries. By the 1400s it was reduced to its capital city, Constantinople, and a little territory in southern Greece. The rump Byzantine Empire was reduced to a Turkish vassal state, and so too, soon, was Wallachia. Vlad II was obliged to hand over his two younger boys, Dracula and Radu, as hostages, to be brought up at the court of the Sultan Murad II at Edirne. Yong hostages were likely to be well treated so long as their fathers toed the line, but there was also uncertainty and even terror for them. When two Serbian princes, Stefan and Gregor, were found to be in 'treasonous' correspondence with their father, they had their eyes put out with hot irons by their Turkish custodians (despite the pleading for mercy of their fair sister who was a wife of the Sultan). It was also standard practices for Turkish sultans to commence their reigns, meanwhile, by murdering their own brothers, eliminating potential rivals, so a shadow of death and cruelty was always over the luxurious Turkish court. Such was Dracula's formative environment.

During his period as a hostage, Dracula clearly learned to hate the Turks, especially Murad's son Mehmet II (who would succeed as sultan aged 19). Dracula studied the enemy and bided his time. Dracula's brother, the handsome Radu, meanwhile, developed a kind of Stockholm syndrome, or at least despaired and threw in his lot with the seemingly ascendant Muslims. Radu also submitted ultimately to Mehmet's homosexual advances.

While Dracula was languishing as a hostage of the Sultan, his father and elder brother were murdered by members of their own nobility, the Boyars. This overthrow was sanctioned by Janos Hunyadi, a Hungarian strong-man, governing Transylvania. Hunyadi was one of the finer generals of the European/Christian resistance and more implacable opponent of the Turks. Along with Vladislav I of Hungary and Gregor Brankevik of Serbia (the father of the blinded hostages), Hunyadi led a crusade in the Balkans which defeated the Turks again and again during 1443, in a long campaign that extended into the winter. Many cities were liberated, and the Sultan was obliged to sign a ten year truce. At the instigation of the Papal legate, who absolved them of their vows, the Crusaders broke their terms, leading to the ill-fated battle of Varna in 1444. Hunyadi's reasons for removing Dracula's father may have been because Vlad II Dracul failed to offer adequate support at Varna. (Vlad II had observed 'The Sultan goes hunting with more troops than the Christians are bringing to this battle!'). In fact Vlad II had done as much as he dared, and feared that the Turks would kill his hostage sons. He sent a small force under his eldest son, Mirceau, to assist at Varna, although the result was still defeat. After Varna, many of Hunyadi's earlier gains had been reversed.

Hunyadi had deposed Vlad II of Wallachia in 1446. Dracula, in his early teens, was released by the Turks to claim the throne, but was soon ousted from power in the course of ongoing intrigues. Hunyadi was instrumental in restoring Dracula to power, some years later. A common desire to fight on against the Turks probably forged some sort of bond between Hunyadi and the young Dracula, in spite of everything. Hunyadi declared to the pope in 1448 how he had 'had enough of our men enslaved, our women raped, wagons loaded with the severed heads of our people" and his eagerness to expel "the enemy from Europe".

Alas more of such horrors were to come. Mehmet II was bent on the capture of Constantinople, the 'Queen of Cities'. In 1452 Mehmet built a castle on the European side of Bosphoros, establishing control of the seaward route to Constantinople as well as that by land. Constantine IX, the last Byzantine Emperor sent emissaries to protest about the trespass, and Mehmet had them executed. He showed similar ruthlessness towards the crew of a Venetian ship that attempted to bring supplies to Constantinople- sinking it and executing the survivors, including the captain who he impaled on a large wooden stake.

An emissary from Hunyadi sought to negotiate with the Sultan in order to save Byzantium, although Hunyadi was in no position to make serious threats. Hopelessly outnumbering Constantinople's gallant defenders, the Turks under Mehmet II beset the city fiercely in 1453. The Emperor Constantine died valiantly, having repulsed so many earlier attempts by the swarming invaders. An orgy of raping and pillaging ensued. Mehmet gave the surviving citizens and movable goods to his soldiers, insisting, however that the land and buildings were now his property. One of his first acts, after entering the city, was to give thanks to Allah in the venerable cathedral of Hagia Sophia, signalling its conversion into a Mosque. Radu, Dracula's brother, had also been converted to Islam, and was with the Sultan throughout this time, holding a position in the Turkish court and a commission in the Janissaries. A reversal of fortunes for Mehmet II, (and Hunyadi's greatest victory) came at the battle of Belgrade, in 1456. Mehmet II was wounded and forced to retreat. Hunyadi along with many of his compatriots subsequently perished in a plague that ravaged the Christian camp.

1456 was also the year in which Dracula secured his rule of Wallachia, with his capital in Trigoviste. He evidently wanted to put his house in order and settle scores before engaging with the Turks. His first priority seems to have been vengeance against the Boyars, whom he blamed for the deaths of his father and older brother Mirceau, who has been blinded and buried alive. Dracula laid on a banquet for the complacent nobles, then asked them how many princes they had lived under, obliging them to incriminate themselves. He had them all seized, and their families too. Some, the older ones, he had impaled there and then, the others he clapped in irons, and had them marched away through the mountains to labour on the construction of his castle, Poienari, perched on a high peak above the river Agres. Many either died through exposure or were worked to death. Dracula replaced the purged nobles with new men, more likely to be beholden to him alone. Vlad built other fortresses including what would become the city of Bucharest.

Mehmet II soon turned his attention to the region, demanding submission and tribute. Mehmet sent envoys to Dracula in 1459, demanding an annual tribute payment (Jizya) of 10,000 ducats, to betoken Wallachia's submission to the Muslims. The Sultan also demanded 500 Wallachian boys be sent for the Turkish army. Dracula ordering the turbans of the Turkish emissaries to be nailed to their heads because they did not remove them on entering his presence.

In this period Dracula was effectively the only regional ruler answering the Pope's call to Crusade and continuing to resist Ottoman expansionism. His one significant ally was the Hungarian warlord and regent, Michael Szilágyi, who had fought with distinction at Belgrade. Szilágyi was captured in 1460, taken to Constantinople and sawn in half by the Turks.

The Sultan sent Hamza Pasha, the lord or 'bey' of Nicopolis, to negotiate peace with Dracula, but with secret instructions to ambush him and bring him back in chains to Constantinople. Dracula discovered the plot, however, and pre-emptively ambushed the Turkish force at a pass en route to Giurgiu, essentially wiping them out in an engagement where small arms fire (still a novelty for the period) played a prominent role. The captured Turks were impaled on stakes. Vlad's time in Turkish custody had served him well, and he was then able to disguise himself as a Turk and ride on to a Turkish-held fortress, demanding in Turkish that the guards let him in, and then laying waste to the place. Dracula then crossed the frozen Danube, and took the war to the Turks and their collaborators in Bulgaria, where he captured and impaled over 23,000 of the enemy.

Dracula wrote to Matthias Corvinus, Hunyadi's son who was now king of Hungary, as follows, concerning the status of his relationship with Mehmet II: ' I have killed peasants, men and women, old and young, who lived at Oblucitza and Novoselo, where the Danube flows into the sea, up to Rahova, which is located near Chilia, from the lower Danube up to such places as Samovit and Ghighen. We killed 23,884 Turks without counting those whom we burned in homes or the Turks whose heads were cut by our soldiers... Thus, your highness, you must know that I have broken the peace with him.'

Mehmet was busy besieging Corinth, but sent his Grand Visier with a force of 18,000 against the Wallachian city of Brăila. Dracula intercepted  and vanquished them. Then Mehmet initiated a full scale invasion of Wallachia. More battles and skirmishes ensued, including a Night Attack, of June 17 1462, during which the Impaler and his men audaciously stormed the Ottoman camp, although Mehmet himself escaped their deadly designs.

When Mehmet and his army of 90,000 (including Janissaries led by Radu) approached Dracula's capital at Targoviste, he was met with the spectacle of another forest of impaled Turkish prisoners, over 20,000 in all, their decomposing bodies sliding down the gore-covered wooden shafts, and the tattered remains of their finery flapping in the breeze. The sight and the almighty stench, caused the Turks to withdraw for a time.

Vlad also used guerrilla and scorched earth tactics. The invaders of course also committed atrocities, and struck fear into the Wallachians. At one point Dracula's wife jumped to her death from a besieged castle's tower into the river, preferring suicide to the prospect of falling into Turkish hands. Dracula's loyal peasants assisted his escape from another siege, putting backwards horseshoes on his steed to confuse the enemy about the direction he travelled, and enabling him to live to fight another day. Dracula never possessed a large army and was confronted with overwhelming odds. This may explain the resorting to grandiose terror tactics, designed to intimidate a much more powerful enemy, to catch them off guard, and generally to make the Turks more frightened of Kazıklı Bey - the Impaler Lord, than they were of their own despotic Sultan.

However, other stories about Dracula's reign seem to indicate that he became deeply unhinged. Dracula seems to have an excessive sense of propriety, and no sense of proportion when it came to imposing punishment. He once, it is said, ordered the wife of a peasant to be impaled because he saw her husband shivering in a short coat, and thought she should have knitted him a longer one.  A lazy wife was deemed unworthy of life in Dracula's realm (whether or not her husband was satisfied with her). Dracula evidently had no sympathy, either, for the 'undeserving' poor. It is said that he once laid on a lavish banquet for paupers, and then shut them in and burned down the building, ridding Wallachia of people he considered a weak link.

A Florentine merchant visiting Dracula's capital requested that some servants watch over his money and his cart of goods. Dracula ordered the merchant instead to leave the cart and money in the public square over-night. In the morning the merchant discovered that a certain amount of money had been stolen, which he reported to the prince. Dracula ordered the money be reimbursed from his own treasury, while telling the townspeople to catch the thief or the city would burn. The merchant counted the money and found that the correct amount had been made up, plus a single ducat, which he duly returned to Dracula. Dracula was pleased, ordering the thief (who had been found meanwhile) to be brought forward, telling the merchant that he could go in peace, but that if he had not returned the single extra coin then he would have been impaled along with the thief.

Dracula obviously incurred an evil reputation among the Saxon German merchants who lived in his domain (and who controlled Sighişoara in Transylvania, the city of Dracula's birth, where his father was then in exile. The Germans were responsible for the pamphlets which carried the Impaler's lurid reputation to wider Europe, tales of his readiness to cut open a mistress who falsely claimed to be pregnant, and to impale monks bold enough to tell him he was damned for his tyranny and cruelty. (Vlad's ambiguous relationship with Christianity was hinted at in a painting of 1463, wherein he is shown in the role of Pontius Pilate- judging his presumed eventual judge.) Russian accounts of Dracula's reign portray him in a more favourable light, as a just ruler and brave soldier.

Turkish forces under the turncoat Radu continued to wage war against Dracula's forces, compelling Dracula to seeking an alliance with King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. Corvinus, however, saw fit to turn on Dracula and take him prisoner. Meanwhile Radu was installed in Wallachia as a Turkish puppet. This must have been a bitter period for Dracula to endure, although his remarriage, to Illona Szilágyi, Corvinus's cousin, who gave him two sons, may have improved matters. He seems to have been granted some freedoms in 1466.

In the early 1470s Vlad retook Wallachia, with assistance from the ruler of Moldavia, his cousin Stefan cel Mare, another redoubtable campaigner against the Ottomans, and also with Stephen Bathory, the Voivode of Transylvania (who was later became King of Poland). The adversary was Basarab, another Turkish puppet-ruler who had succeeded Radu. Dracula's allies withdrew following his restoration to the throne, only for Wallachia to come under renewed Turkish attack.

The matter of whether Dracula was a hero or a monster hinges on whether his despotic regime was worse for his own people than Turkish occupation would have been. He was certainly a product, and arguably a victim, of the Ottoman Empire, which beset his homeland and stole his childhood. He was brought up amid the pressures of the Ottoman court, at personal risk of death or mutilation if his absent father stepped out of line. Dracula was surrounded by luxury but beaten by his tutors, and had to witness the corrupting and turning of his younger brother, who he could not protect from the Ottoman system, personified in the lusting form of Mehmet II. Hardly surprising that he would seek to be avenged against this rapacious empire, from which he did not escape untainted. Dracula was also, however, a product of the ruthless, mafia-like culture on the edge of feudal Europe. He was a violent man in violent times, a world of insecure thrones and Byzantine politics, where faith and loyalty often had to be retained through fear. At the root of many of Dracula's excesses appears to have been a genuine if extreme concern for law and order and the good of the realm, even if punishing supposed wrongdoers also became an outlet for the Prince' own bloodthirsty inclinations.